Hope no one minds a minor digression, but if you can relate to the sentiment
below, as I can, you may want to check out OpenOffice.org, an open-source
office suite that does all the same things MSOffice does, and then some. Based
on Sun's Star Office. No fees, ever.
--
Christopher W. Ryan, MD
SUNY Upstate Medical University Clinical Campus at Binghamton
and Wilson Family Practice Residency
40 Arch Street, Johnson City, NY 13790
[email protected]
Public key generated with PGP 602i available at
http://home.stny.rr.com/ryancw/PGP602ipublickey.html
or via http://wwwkeys.us.pgp.net:11371
"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the
work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless
sea." [Antoine de St. Exupery]
>
>There is a disturbing movement in the software industry to move from
>"software as product" to "software as service". The annual
>subscription is a
>waypoint toward that final industry goal. Its a business model
>intended to
>suck more money out of the market and stabilize cash flow between
>upgrades,
>while at the same time reducing pressure on the big software
>companies to
>actually develop new useful features that make upgrades worth
>buying. E.g.,
>other than a prettier interface, what major improvement has there
>been
>between MS Office 95 and MS Office XP? And yet in most cases if you
>buy a
>computer from a major manufacturer you will be paying for the Office
>upgrade
>in the purchase price. Personally, I think (hope?) the "software-as-
>service"
>model will be killed by natural selection. Maybe that will benefit
>smaller
>start-ups.
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